"And honey...I know how I look."

Hello! I’m Steven Moffat and I’m back to write yet another episode of Doctor Who.

The reason I came back is, I thought, “What if you put the Doctor in incredible danger, in the middle of a battlefield, and you removed from him one thing that he always does, one thing that he always relies on?"

Steven Moffat, BBC interview

Donna Noble : He saves worlds, rescues civilizations, defeats terrible creatures and runs a lot. Seriously, there's an outrageous amount of running involved.

Doctor Who, The Doctor's Daughter

In a noteworthy return to Doctor Who as a writer, ex-show runner Steven Moffat gives us Boom:  an eloquent, well-written script, tight, emotional, loaded with clever exposition, and full of tension. It's a bit of a relief, really, after having a couple of less than inspired episodes to start the season off.  

As per his comments on the story, he wanted to take away the Doctor's ability to flee from danger - in other words, no running - as part of a situation where the danger was both immediate and terminal. The resulting man-on-a-land-mine storyline succeeds on every level.

The story takes place during a war - or does it? The Anglican Army, previously seen in A Good Man Goes to War, has established a beachhead on the planet Kastarion, but the Kastarions have proven to be an elusive foe. The Anglicans are supported by the Villengard arms corporation, which takes an oddly economical approach to combat: soldiers deemed not worth saving are euthanized by robotic AI ambulances rather than treated (in order to maintain predicted casualty rates), and instead of using explosives in its landmines, the Villengard version creates a chain reaction that uses the victim's DNA to create the detonation.  

As the Doctor and Ruby arrive on Kastarion, they hear the screams of a soldier being euthanized.  As they run to investigate, the Doctor steps on a mine: he manages to not trigger the explosion, but can't move without setting off the chain reaction.  The balance of the episode revolves around the trapped and immobile Doctor finding a way to disable the mine and save a wounded Ruby from being terminated. 

It's interesting to see Moffat working with the new Doctor's style as a performer.  For example, the Doctor delivers the following speech:

"I am a Timelord. I am a higher dimension life form, I am a complex space-time event. I am a much bigger bang than you bargained for. I am a lot more explosive than I look, and honey...I know how I look. Put a quantum chain reaction through me and I will shatter this silly little battlefield of yours into dust. All of it. In a heartbeat. Into dust."

It's hard to imagine any of the previous Doctors commenting on how explosive they look* - especially with the endearment of "honey" as a prefix.  But for Gatwa, it perfectly matches the persona he's using for the character, while combining it with a very Doctor-like warning about potentially destroying the arena.

Varada Sethu, who makes an appearance as Anglican Army soldier Mundy Flynn, is reported to be joining the show as a companion. Given that the episode features another cameo by Susan Twist, it's hard to say whether Sethu's appearance is just what it appears to be, a guest spot by an actor, or another piece of this season's big picture puzzle.  It could easily go either way - after all, Peter Capaldi and Karen Gillan coincidentally appeared together in The Fires of Pompeii in Season 4 before making the eventual jump to Doctor and Companion.  Time will tell, as they say...

- Sid

* Okay, maybe David Tennant...